Aspects of the present invention relate generally to the field of integrated circuit design, and more specifically to displaying and editing stacked designs.
Integrated circuit (IC) design is a complex process, often involving a large number of elements, shapes or geometries, and may be facilitated with an electronic design automation (EDA) tool that allows a designer to interactively position (“place”) and connect (“route”) various shapes on a circuit. The EDA tool then creates a circuit layout or document containing the physical locations and dimensions of the circuit's components, interconnections, and various layers from the original design that may then be fabricated, creating the IC.
ICs may be designed such that adjacent dies are connected to form a complex package consisting of multiple distinct but connected dies. Dies may be connected either using a wire to connect the contacts between two dies or via one or more micro-bumps placed on each die. When two adjacent dies have overlapping micro-bumps, they can form a connection. Consequently, the placement and alignment of micro-bumps on a die is critical to the effective design of adjacent die in a package. However, the alignment and effect of a micro-bump placement in a first die may not be apparent in an adjacent die where each die is individually displayed, accessed, edited, tested, and validated. Additionally, correcting the alignment of micro-bumps in adjacent die may be difficult when the designer is required to view and independently edit each design layout without specific knowledge of the effect of an edit on the adjacent die. Editing a die in a package may be further complicated where each die is created using a different layout editor or different technology. A designer may then repeatedly access and edit the design layout for each individual die one by one in order to make small changes in the micro-bump placement to correct the micro-bump alignment or to make other element placement adjustments.
Accordingly there is a need in the art for a three-dimensional circuit design editor to more effectively access the design files for multiple dies and to facilitate proper micro-bump alignment, by synchronizing the display and edit of multiple connected dies. Such an editor may be useful in other contexts in which two documents or layouts are shown as connected in some other way besides micro-bumps, where the features themselves are implicated, for example, in respective dies, and where the ability to align two such features may be facilitated by viewing them in the same window, rather than separately.